Harry's Year of Running Q4

 Harry's Year of Running Q4

October

October is the Cabbage Patch 10 miler. I was not quite a fast as at the Thames Towpath 10, but managed a good placing for the club champs, so I was happy enough. I saw a rival eagle on behind switchback off Richmond Bridge and spent the run-in to Twickenham thinking the foot falls behind me were him about to overtake.

Cabbage patch 10 coming up to Richmond bridge

November

November and I had entered the Thames Meander Marathon partly out of curiosity of where my form was. Testing the theory that you can run a marathon without telling everyone, I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone except my family the day before, and toyed with idea of running it as a long training run. I hadn’t banked on England making the rugby world cup final that day, and almost didn’t start as Osterly Parkrun was cancelled due to the high winds and rain. However there is something about a race, and when the gun went off, so did I, and after a mentally tough final 6 miles  I ended up finishing in 3:10:45, my second fastest marathon time.

After the Thames Meander marathon

Then it was back to Met League XC at Welwyn having missed the opener at Claybury. Welwyn has a choke point after 400 meters or so causing those at the back to walk, leading to mad sprint start.

Welwyn Met league at the tricky bank/switchback

It was not my greatest run, so I tapered properly for the London Championships the following week at Parliament Hill, and with fresher legs managed a much better effort to come 197st out of 491.

London XC championships at Parliament hill.

December

December meant Perival 5, where I matched my best time from the Summer League to the second – but now it counted on Powerof10.

Perivale 5 turning into Costons Lane

I decided against doing the double of Osterly 10k and Uxbridge Met League, as I wanted to do Met League justice with the river crossing. It wasn’t quite as deep as the previous year, but still a shock to the system, and a tricky scramble up the bank.

Uxbridge Met League: The infamous river crossing 

The course also has the ‘ski slope’, the steepest slope of all the Met League courses. I had also noticed I was on for over 10k/day over the year, and upped the mileage, to end with over 3800 km at 4:32 min/km. My fasted time for Gunnersbury Parkrun in 2018 was 19:15, in 2019 my average of 21 Gunnersbury Parkruns was 19:05. In total I did 34 Parkruns, with most of the remainder running to and from other West London Parkruns, including Bushy and Hampstead Heath.

It had been quite a year of running.

You are still not at the end of the blog - if you want to know what happened next (spoiler alert, there is a global pandemic) then read Harry's Year of Running - Epilogue

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